Tarik Skubal Wins Arbitration Case
Tarik Skubal, the back-to-back American League Cy Young winner, has won his arbitration case and will make $32 million for the 2025 season. To say this is an unprecedented development would be an understatement. This sets a new bar for pitchers in arbitration, as Skubal in his final year of arbitration, has beaten the overall record set by Juan Soto in 2024.
Skubal has shattered the previous pitcher record set in 2015 by David Price of $19.75 million. Skubal’s salary is a 62% increase over that record. Skubal’s jump from $10.15 million to $32 million, a $21.85 million increase, also shattered the increase record set by Jacob deGrom in 2019 when he went from $7.4 million to $17 million – a $9.6 million increase. DeGrom increased his salary by 129.7%. Skubal increased his by 215.3%.
The Tigers submitted their bid at $19 million, which meant that Skubal only had to prove he was worth more than $25.5 million. While that may not seem like a tall task, that is already a 34% increase over Price’s previous record and a 151.2% increase from his previous salary – more than deGrom’s record. Going into his hearing, the five largest final arbitration salaries for starting pitchers over the last three seasons were:
- Framber Valdez – $18 million
- Corbin Burnes – $15.637 million
- Max Fried – $15 million
- Julio Urias – $14.24 million
- Shane Bieber – $13.125 million
Skubal is more accomplished than all of those starters with his two Cy Young awards, and because of his service time, he was able to compare himself to any pitcher contract he wanted. According to Jeff Passan of ESPN, Skubal “built his case around starting-pitching salaries that have exceeded $40 million.”
Skubal will serve as the lead man in what may be the best one-two punch in baseball alongside Framber Valdez, whom the Tigers signed to a three-year contract on Wednesday. They will also be one of the most expensive duos in baseball, as Valdez’s contract was for $115 million (before deferrals).
Regarding Skubal’s arbitration strategy, as Jeff Passan wrote, “The gambit worked.”
The post Tarik Skubal Wins Arbitration Case appeared first on Metsmerized Online.